Writing On the Wall

by Lynne Reid Banks

  But anyway we went down to the desk. From the top of the stairs we could see it wasn’t her. It was a dark young bloke. Looked like a Paki.

  Kev doesn’t like Pakis.

  “I see they come choco and coffee flavoured here too,” he said, quite loud.

  Of course he didn’t think this man would understand English. He didn’t say it to hurt him. He just says things like that. Still, I gave him a nudge. Always reminds me how I feel about the Irish and Polish jokes, cracks like that about blacks.

  The Paki (or whatever he was) didn’t look up from his book. Kev went up to him.

  “Night club?” he said, rather loud.

  Now he looked up, all smiles.

  “A night club? Certainly, sir. What kind do you prefer?”

  Perfect English. God! Still . . . probably didn’t hear. I hoped not.

  Kev said, “Something special, but not too dear.”

  “Of course, I know the very place. It is called Achteras. That means in English, ‘Back Axle’. As on a car. A witty name, isn’t it?”

  I thought it was a dead silly name for a nightclub, but of course I didn’t say so. It turned out not to be very far away – we needn’t take our bikes. We could just stroll along the canal, across some bridges, and there we were.

  It was down in a cellar which I thought made it more exciting. You went down a passage all painted green with gold stars to a table where a blond man was taking money. I thought he was a bit old still to have such lovely golden hair, but he smiled at us in a very friendly way and said, “Good evening, dears.” I suppose he knew from our T-shirts we were English. We could hear the music booming away very near us. Kev paid. It was about £5 each just to get in.

  We opened the double doors. The music bashed out at us.

  It was nearly pitch black at first; every few seconds lights flashed on and off again in patterns. One spotlight kept sweeping the room. Every sweep it was a new colour, mostly pinks and violets.

  It was a big place. There wasn’t a proper stage, just an open space in the middle of the tables, with a group playing straight rock. The singer was a woman. She looked rather old for a pop singer, and she hadn’t much of a figure. She wore an old-fashioned long fitted dress in a spangly material, and she was crooning out a song in a low, rather hard voice. All round her were couples dancing.

  We groped our way to a free table. My eyes took about five minutes to get used to the dark. There was something funny about those people. Kev caught on before I did.

  “Bloody hell!” he muttered suddenly. “They’re all men!”

  “Who are?”

  “All of ’em. The lot. The women too. They’re men.”

  I looked round again, in a sort of panic. I couldn’t be the only girl in the place! There was the singer for a start. . . . But one really good look at her hefty shoulders and hard, jutting jaw showed me my mistake.

  I looked round at the tables near us. There were couples sitting with their heads together over their drinks, whispering and laughing . . . some of them weren’t even dressed as women, they were sitting there necking or holding hands with men and they were men. Kev was right. I could see that now – even the ones with blond wigs and high heels and split skirts.

  I felt as if I’d wandered into the gents by mistake – no, worse than that. As if I’d got into a world where there were no women except me. Why had they let me in? Why wasn’t I stopped at the door?

  “They’re all bloody poufs,” muttered Kev. He started to get up to go. Suddenly a big fellow in leather trousers and a plaid shirt open to the waist, with very short hair and a black moustache, came up to our table. He had leather wristlets studded with brass nails, and he looked harder than Kojak without his lollypop.

  “Commie dancin’,” he said (or that’s what it sounded like). And he wasn’t talking to me, either.

  Kev stared at him with his mouth open. Then he sat down again, quick. “Er – no thanks,” he said, and shook his head till I thought he’d shake it off.

  The man held his great meaty arms out. Kev seemed to shrink till he was nearly under the table.

  “Vy not?” he asked. “Pretty little Englishman. Kom.”

  “Bloody hell,” muttered Kev. He’d gone sort of putty coloured. Then he had an inspiration. He turned to me. “I’m with her.”

  The big butch fellow looked at me.

  “Ah yes,” he said. “Very nice boy. Excuse.” And he waved to me and pushed his great hairy chest through the crowd.

  Then I knew why old golden boy had let me in. He thought I was a fella.

  “I want to go,” I whispered.

  “Good thinking,” said Kev.

  We pushed our way out. The old poufter gave us a look.

  “Something not nice?”

  “No, no! It’s all very nice,” said Kev, with a sickly smile. “Just not our scene, that’s all.” And we ran for it along the green corridor and up the steps into the street.

  “Of course the little black bastard heard me,” said Kev after a bit.

  “Who?”

  “The one at the hotel. He heard what I said. That’s why he sent us to that queer club. Ten quid down the drain! I’d like to kick his teeth in.”

  I don’t know what got into me then, but I stopped feeling faintly sick and started wanting to laugh. Kev’s face when that macho type came up to him for a dance! I just started to giggle and I couldn’t stop.

  “What’s the flaming joke?” Kev nearly shouted. “I don’t think it’s funny! I don’t think it should be allowed!”

  “Go on, it’s their club. They can do what they like, they weren’t hurting nobody.”

  “I thought that Hell’s Angel was going to do me an injury. And what about that singer? Poor man’s Danny La Rue.”

  “Get away, there’s no law against a bit of dressing up. It was a good laugh if you ask me.”

  We were walking back beside the canal. Kev was striding along. I didn’t like the look in his eye. He can turn nasty when he wants. I once saw him pull a pen-knife on a black boy at school who threw a punch at him.

  “You know what it says in the Bible about that sort of ‘dressing up’ as you call it,” he said.

  “No, what?”

  “Stoning to death. That’s what.”

  I stopped walking.

  “Get away!” I said.

  “Straight up.”

  “Jesus never said that!”

  “Jesus! Who’s talking about Jesus? It’s in the Old Testament, isn’t it!”

  Is it? I never read much of the Old Testament. Only Adam and Eve and that. And Noah.

  I came up again level with him.

  “Listen, Kev, let’s try somewhere else.”

  “I’m going to settle that Paki first.”

  My heart nearly stopped. Not a fight! I grabbed his arm.

  “Kev, don’t start anything in there – please! I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm—”

  “He meant it all right. But he’ll be sorry when I’ve done with him.”

  “Kev—”

  No use. He’d got himself worked into such a state he started to run. I ran after him, but he got ahead of me, and by the time I got to our little hotel he’d gone in the door.

  I rushed in, my heart in my mouth. There was Kev, leaning over the counter. He’d got hold of this little dark man, and was shouting at him.

  “What you think I am, Cocoa? Think I’m a pouf, do you? Well, I’ll tell you what you are, you’re a little black turd, that’s what! I’m going to bash your face in for you—”

  He’d’ve done it too, if I hadn’t jumped on him and dragged him off. I had to give his arm a good knock to make him let go, but I’m quite strong when I need to be and he wasn’t going to hit me. And of course there was the counter in between too, and the other man was struggling to get away. Anyway I got Kev off and stood in front of him and said, “That’s enough!” Then I said to the Paki, “I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have sent us to that place. Now please tell us a
good place to go, and we’ll go to it.”

  The poor man was rubbing his neck and straightening his shirt. He looked really shaken. He said, “You can try the Greenhouse. It is cheap with a good floorshow. If you don’t like it, don’t blame me. You English have strange tastes. And strange behaviours.” And he rubbed his neck again and glared at Kev.

  Well, you couldn’t help seeing his point. I almost heaved Kev out the door before anything else could happen.

  We went to this Greenhouse place. It turned out to be miles off. We had to get a bus in the end. I was half starved by now, and I’d have settled for a good meal, but Kev had the bit between his teeth. He was going to see a rude floorshow if it killed both of us. And it nearly did.

  Again he shelled out. This time at least we stopped long enough to get a drink and a bite to eat. It was only a bite, and all – scraps of something wrapped up in bacon, and some nuts, I ask you! I could have put away four Tourist Menus and had room left over for a couple of quarterpounders.

  It wasn’t as if I had much company in my misery, either. Kev just sat there drumming the little table with his fingers, staring at the band with his jaw-muscles working, just daring them not to bring on something worth writing home about. Me, I was dreading it, to say the true. I’d seen the pictures in Soho, and a time or two on late-night telly when Mum wasn’t around to switch off, and I thought I’d just as soon give it a miss. Tonight of all nights, when I was trying to get into a romantic mood, sex in the raw wasn’t really what I was after.

  It was what I got though. Blimey O’Reilly! Near the knuckle wasn’t in it, it was right through to the elbow. The poufs were a convent tea-party by comparison, in fact before long I was wishing I was back at the old Back Axle watching them all having a dance and a bit of a cuddle, while that dear old poufter in his cover-up dress and fur stole squawked away into the mike. . . . Well, to be honest, after a bit I just shut my eyes and spared my blushes. I swear if I hadn’t, it might have screwed up my sex-life for life.

  “Here,” Kev said suddenly. “We might as well go. It’s no fun with you sitting there with your face in the ashtray.”

  So that was another tenner up the spout and we had to get a taxi back to the hotel, which put Kev into a bad temper again. It was ever so late. I had an awful feeling the hotel would be shut. That was all we needed.

  But it wasn’t. The light was still on in the sign. I remember the relief. Little did I know!

  As we went into the hall, we saw her straight away. The fat lady. She was standing behind the reception counter with her arms folded. She had her hair done in a roll, like a yellow balloon tyre round her head and down over her forehead. Her eyebrows went straight across. Frightening. And her jaw stuck out.

  We started for the stairs, but she spoke to us. What a voice! Like every hard teacher we ever had rolled up in one.

  “Yust one minute please!”

  We stopped dead.

  “Kom. I will speak with you.”

  We kind of slunk towards her. What else could we do? And all of a sudden I saw something even worse than her. Our things – all of them – our rucksacks, half empty, and all the stuff we’d unpacked, pyjamas and washing things and Kev’s salty jeans, all heaped anyhow. And on top, my wet stuff, my pants and bra and T-shirts and socks, that I’d hung out on the balcony.

  “You will leave,” she said. That was all. One o’clock in the morning – out. Just like that.

  I looked at Kev. He didn’t have a word to say, so I had to say something. “Why? What’ve we done?”

  “I will tell you. You are very bad young. You go together without married. That is your business and not mine. But when you speak so to my clerk because he is from Indonesia, and when you do hurt to him, that is my business. Also I do not allow that you suspend your underdressings in front of my hotel.”

  “What?”

  “Your underdressings!” she shouted. She picked up my pants in one hand and my bra in the other and flapped them at me. “That is not polite to expose to the street the underdressings! Such you may do in England but here we are more modest. Now you will take all dressings altogether and pay my bill and leave my hotel!”

  Kev come-to smartish, when money was mentioned.

  “We ain’t paying,” he said, “and that’s flat! What you charging us for, throwing us out on the street in the middle of the night?”

  “I charge you for dirt and laundry and for compensate my clerk! You will pay one night lodging or I call police.”

  We stood there. At last I nudged Kev. “You’d better pay,” I said. I was thinking of the mud on the bedspread.

  Kev fished out his wallet so slow you’d’ve thought it had weights on it. I felt like crying. I was ashamed and tired and scared.

  “Where shall we go?” I asked in a choky voice.

  Old Tyre-top looked at me, and her iron jaw softened a bit.

  “How are you old?” she asked me.

  “Sixteen. And three quarters,” I added, like Lily, trying to feel older.

  She unfolded her arms. Her big boobs sort of quivered.

  “I give address,” she said. She wrote something on a card and handed it to me. “Very cheap place, but clean. You take your cycle, reach there soon.”

  “Will they let us in, this time of night?” I was down on the floor stuffing the things into our rucksacks, still trying not to cry. I had to wipe my nose on my wet T-shirt.

  “I telephone. They expect you.”

  Kev didn’t say a thing. When he’d paid, he took the rucksacks from me and marched out. But if he thought he was shot of the whole business he was wrong, because just outside on the pavement was the clerk. The Indonesian. He was standing there with no expression on his face, holding our bikes ready for us.

  Kev stopped dead and they looked at each other. Like a couple of dogs deciding whether to fight. I ran down the steps and grabbed my bike.

  “Thanks for bringing them round,” I said.

  But he wasn’t looking at me, only at Kev. He pushed his bike towards him. Kev didn’t move.

  “If you were half a man,” said the clerk, “you would apologise to me.”

  “If you were half a man,” Kev said, “I’d bash your face in.”

  I shut my eyes tight. Something inside me seemed to shut, too. I thought, That’s it. Not tonight. No matter what. It’s not enough to fancy someone. You’ve got to like him too. And I couldn’t like Kev, not after that, not the same night anyway.

  14 · Neils and Yohan

  My great decision – not to have it away with Kev that night – didn’t count for much as it turned out. Because this place she sent us to didn’t have double bedrooms. They had sort of dormitories instead. In fact it was a youth hostel, or something like one. By the time we found it, and were let in, and registered, and went out again to chain up our bikes, and dragged our junk up the stairs, I could no more have got romantic than swum the Channel. I was put in one room and Kev in another. There were four beds in mine, three of them full of girls snoring. I pulled my top clothes off and climbed into my sleeping-bag in my “underdressings” and was asleep in two ticks.

  Next day me and Kev met for breakfast in the canteen or whatever you’d call it. I felt better. I always do in the mornings. Every day’s another day, after all. Whatever’s happened the night before, you can’t go on being miserable forever. To be honest there’s very few things that don’t strike my funnybone after a good night’s sleep. That fat lady waving my wet bra and pants at me, and getting all uptight about me hanging them on the balcony, that struck me as priceless. Specially after she’d let us in in the the first place, knowing we weren’t married. Talk about swallowing a camel and choking on a gnat!

  But I agreed with her about her clerk; that wasn’t on. The only thing I couldn’t have a bit of a private giggle over that morning was Kev saying to that Indonesian that he wanted to bash his face in.

  Kev looked a bit hangdog. Perhaps he was ashamed, after all. I hoped so. I decided that he was,
and deserved cheering up.

  “What we doing today?”

  “I dunno. I’ve half a mind to go back to the others.”

  He’d half a mind? I’d a whole mind. I wanted to, more than anything. It was babes-in-the-wood time, us here alone. But I knew we’d never find them.

  “We can’t. We’ll see ’em on Tuesday, on the boat, like you said.” This was Friday. We had three more days. . . . My heart sank a bit, I admit it. “We’ve got to try and keep out of trouble.” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Kev, “and nightclubs. I’m thirty quid light after last night, bloody thieves!”

  “We got our money’s worth,” I said. “At least, you got yours! Wasn’t all that what you came here for in the first place? Dirtiest city in Europe, etcetera etcetera?”

  He looked up at me, saw I was needling him, and grinned, sheepish. “Get away, that was nothing,” he mumbled into his cheese roll. We were both eating like horses after our thin night.

  “We got to face it, mate,” I said, “all that steamy stuff’s not for good little Catholics like us.”

  “You speak for yourself! Don’t affect me.”

  “Course it does. Tell you the truth, when I looked at those two, stripped off and writhing about in that red spotlight, it was like a bit of hell.”

  “Bit of heaven, more like! I thought you wasn’t looking at all.”

  “Peeped through my fingers once in a while, didn’t I?”

  “Well. At least you know now how it’s done.”

  I burst out giggling. Couldn’t help it.

  “If old Cliff and Karen’d had a go at it like them two, that tent would’ve come apart!”

  Kev choked into his coffee.

  “Don’t you worry, girl,” he said, “you and me’ll do it the good old-fashioned way.”

  I stopped giggling. I think I’d been kind of hoping he’d forget the whole idea. I couldn’t face another three days of should I, shouldn’t I.

  “Listen, Kev. If you’re short of cash, what’s wrong with stopping here?”

  He put his coffee cup down.

  “Turn you off, did it, all that? The poufs, and them two going at it in public?”

  “Well. A bit. Didn’t it you?”